


our bodies, possessed by dust

by kindclaws



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Terrible Choices, Canonverse but with DAEMONS, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Octavia-centric, this fic does not excuse Octavia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-06-10 17:46:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6966982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindclaws/pseuds/kindclaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grief is ugly, and so is Octavia's soul.</p><p>She finds some kind of violent justice in the fact that when she dies, Perseus, like all daemons, will shatter in a cloud of golden Dust and dissipate on the wind, back to the sky from which they came. But Octavia will remain. They will have to scrub her from the stone, and still she will leave a stain that says <em>I was here, I was glorious, I was bright and brimming with life.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	our bodies, possessed by dust

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: Lincoln's canonical death, Octavia's violent tendencies, Octavia beating Bellamy, a fair amount of self-hatred and guilt.
> 
> S3 Octavia is in a dark place doing dark things and I urge you all to take care while reading. <3 I don't excuse her actions, and I'm thoroughly disappointed with the abuse scene, but - I couldn't cut it out of the fic. So I had to make it part of her characterization.
> 
> DAEMON CRASH COURSE: (feel free to skip if you already know what's up.)  
> Basically, every person's soul exists outside of their own body, in the form of an animal that represents them. Daemons are comprised of golden Dust, which you know is important because it's capitalized. As a child, they can shapeshift into many forms. They often 'settle' into a permanent form after puberty, or after an event that strongly shapes them as a person. Daemons resettling is basically unheard of - it would require a very life-changing experience.  
> Daemons also can't go very far from their humans - a meter or two at most - without serious pain or possible death occurring. The exception to this is people who have undergone a separation ordeal, which I figure Grounder warriors would def do, bc they're all about unnecessary displays of strength. Severing is a similar, but more awful thing to do: it's not a willing separation, and it's less 'stretching' the bond between human and daemon, and more just... cutting it off. It's seriously traumatic. It also yields a huge amount of powerful Dust energy - which, hey, Mt Weather could probably use.  
> Daemon etiquette is a tricky thing. You DON'T touch other people's daemons (unless you're very VERY comfortable lovers, and sometimes not even then) and you often don't communicate directly to someone else's daemon. It's kinda weird. Daemons often will talk to each other, that's cool.  
> I think that's everything? Read on.

 

 

 

When Octavia is young she asks, once, before she knows the extent of the taboo, about Bellamy's name. 

Not his name, not Bellamy. His _name_. 

He smiles thinly and drops his hand to Kaluluwa's head. She is resting at his side in the form of a German Shephard, because she knows Octavia likes dogs, and her ears twitch slightly in acknowledgement. Bellamy doesn't really move his fingers, doesn't seek to stroke her soft fur, just leaves his hand there. Heavy, the weight like a reminder. He is fourteen, and they are both expecting him to settle any day now. Octavia might be even more excited for it than he is. 

(Neither of them know that Bellamy won't settle until he is seventeen and he learns exactly what it is that their mother does to learn inspection dates. That truth hits him in the stomach and weighs heavier than any artificial gravity could, in that moment Kaluluwa cocks her feathered head and looks at him with one beady, sharp eye, and he just nods. Once. Perfunctory.)

"Kaluluwa," Bellamy says. Soft. They can't speak very loudly when Aurora is out of the apartment, in case someone in the halls hears and wonders who Bellamy is talking to. "My dad named me. It's Tagalog for soul."

"Soul," Octavia repeats, and she has to sit on her hands to stop herself from reaching out to touch Kaluluwa's perked ears. Later she will remember this, and wonder if Bellamy would have stopped her if she tried. (He's so used to giving her everything, and she's so used to taking. All Octavia does is take, take, take.)

It's only the cool presence of her own daemon, crawling into her lap on stubby iguana legs, that keeps Octavia in her spot. 

"What does Perseus mean?" she asks, rubbing a fingertip under his scaly chin until she feels his contentment hum through her veins. His skin is rough to the touch and she wears it like armour.

"Slayer of monsters," Bellamy says. His smile is indulging, he always lights up when he talks about mythology and Octavia asks half for the glow under his skin. She knows the story, knows about Medusa's head, he's told it a million times. What she doesn't know is that there are other meaning associated with the name Perseus. _To lay waste, ravage, destroy._

The world doesn't know what she's capable of until much later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She sees everything but the actual execution. She sees the guards with their rifles, locked and ready like they expect him to run. (She knows he never would, but gods, she keeps hoping until the very last second.) She sees him kneel in the mud, this exquisite love of hers, this man that is every poem and lily and radioactive butterfly rolled into one. She sees him look to the sky, away from the muzzle of Pike's gun. 

The shot echoes up the hills, and it cracks something vital inside of her, something she doesn't think can be repaired.

She doesn't see Lincoln die. But she sees his daemon burst into gold Dust at his side, and that is a million times worse. 

Vaguely she is aware of Kane pulling at her sleeve, trying to get her away, but no one can protect her from this. It is too late, it will always be too late to claw that image out of her head. She will take it to her grave, if she is lucky enough to get one, if she too is not murdered and left in the mud. 

Perseus' scream sounds terrifyingly human. 

He screams and he doesn't stop, not even when Kane's badger nips at his ankles. 

Octavia falls to her knees and wraps Perseus in her arms, buries her face in his dirty, matted mane, and lets out an ungodly howl of her own. He is lanky and hunchbacked and snarling, he is vicious and unapologetic when he twists his neck around and sinks his teeth in her arm hard enough that she feels the pain over the keening absence of Dust at Lincoln's side. He is nothing like what she thought they would settle as. She thought they would be a hero, when she still believed in such things.

Grief is ugly, and so is Octavia's soul. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pike's mockery of a graduation happens the day before they are marched to a metal coffin and sent to the Earth with nothing more than a _'safe passage on your travels, on this final journey to the ground'._

On her last night in space Octavia curls up tightly in her bunk, and clutches Perseus to her chest. It's rare that he lets her touch him nowadays, and she's trying to commit this to memory in case she dies tomorrow. Tonight he has taken the form of a cat, and his eyes are glowing in the darkness, full-moon disks.

"I'm not afraid," she whispers into his fur, even though everyone knows it's pointless to lie to your own soul. 

"You shouldn't be," Perseus says. He blinks, long and slow. These days they only ever seem to talk in circles. She'll try to start conversation, and Perseus will parrot meaningless phrases back at her with increasingly mocking undertones until she doesn't remember what they were talking about in the first place. 

Octavia hesitates. 

It's a very lonely thing to not be able to speak honestly to your own soul. She's been lonely for a long time.

"What if I am?" she whispers. "Just a little bit?"

"Then we're going to die," Perseus says, matter of fact. "You saw what the world is like. People like John Murphy lie down and take the beating. People like Pike keep living. If you want power, you have to hurt people for it."

"I don't want to be like Pike," Octavia says, shuddering as she thinks of their Earth Skills teacher bringing his fists down on Murphy over and over again, his snake wrapping herself around Murphy's flailing daemon and tightening with every desperate shift he made, until he had to change into smaller and smaller forms to keep from being crushed by her coils. 

"Fine," Perseus says, turning his head away. "If you don't want to fight to live, I'll make the hard choices for both of us."

Octavia swallows, hard. 

"Perseus," she murmurs, nuzzling her face into his fur, her tears dampening his back. "Perseus, are you sure this is what we have to do?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll do it," she says. "I'm going to fight."

In the morning the guards approach her with a metal wristband that looks like half of the handcuffs they put her mother in, and Octavia shrinks back against the wall. Perseus cranes his neck and bites down on her hand, hard, and she's distracted long enough for them to snap the wristband on her other wrist.

She shoots Perseus a look as they're marched out of their cell, and he says nothing, padding at her side as a bobcat. He likes cat forms nowadays. She wonders if that's how they'll settle.

They're both knocked breathless by the sight of Bellamy's profile standing at the Dropship door, Kaluluwa perched on his shoulder with her feathers puffed up so she looks even bigger. They're both so proud and happy to be the first to step on the ground that for a moment, Octavia almost forgets about her hands, riddled with tiny teeth marks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The daemonology books Bellamy brought home to her never once said anything about a daemon that hates you. Octavia doesn't think it's supposed to happen, and yet, and yet - here she is, always hurtling forward, afraid to look back to the little girl hiding under the floor, unable to slow down for even just a moment because when she does Perseus bites at her heels. 

 _The world will know our name, and they will tell our story centuries from now_ , he tells her, eyes glowing. _We are going to be great._

He never once promises that they'll be _good_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Skybox, Octavia tries hitting Perseus once, in frustration, and feels the ache inside her for hours afterwards. Perseus says nothing, just presses himself to the doorway of their cell like he's going to make a run for it the next time the meal rotation comes by. No amount of pleading can dull the sharp sting of resent in his eyes or make him return to her side. 

In the end it's only her roommate Roma, waking up from a nap and sniffing with disapproval, providing them with a common enemy, that sends him back to her. 

"He shouldn't be that far away from you," Roma says, huddled in her cot with only a long, fluffy tail curled around her neck showing. "It's unnatural. You're a fucking freak, is what you are, Blake. I mean, it's only to be expected, with the way you grew up -"

Perseus leaps in a blur, limbs stretching and fangs growing in mid-air. Octavia doesn't remember much of the fight, only a flash of a memory as he drags Roma's daemon out by his fluffy tail and shakes him violently in his jaws until Roma's screaming brings the guards streaming into their cell. 

They put Octavia into solitary after that.

She yells and beats her fists on the door while Perseus silently paces the confines of their new cell, tail lashing behind him. No one answers.

"Please, I didn't mean to! I don't know why he did it!"

"Shut up," Perseus says. "You're embarrassing yourself. You know exactly why we did it."

"I wish they gave me a better daemon," Octavia says petulantly. She is sixteen and she is alone and she misses Bellamy and Kaluluwa's kind patience. She thinks of the Greek Titans, trapped in a pit forever, and thinks she might be turning into a monster too. She sinks to the ground and wipes her nose on her sleeve. "I wish you weren't such a - A fucking - _freak_. I wish my daemon actually liked me."

Perseus turns his back on her and doesn't say a word for two months and sixteen days.

After their first Earth Skills lesson with Pike, the first time they are ever in a room with so many people after Perseus' outburst, he cocks his head and looks at her and asks - 

"Why bother giving classes to kids that are going to die?"

Octavia is so relieved to hear his voice that she almost forgets to answer. She curls her shaking hands into fists. 

"It means they think we're useful. They won't kill us while we're useful, Perseus."

His tongue lolls out the side of his mouth and it's hard to read a dog's expression, but she thinks it is something between pity and exasperation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bellamy never talks about what happened to him in Mount Weather, even though it's not like people are _stupid_. The Council knows Kaluluwa settled as a hawk, and all the surviving Delinquents remember her circling on thermals high above the Dropship in those early days on the ground, watching over everyone exploring in the forest with her razor-sharp eyes. 

(Even then, Octavia remembers that Bellamy was straining his connection with her to its limits, that he was hurting himself so that she could fly higher and see more. But she never said anything. Some days she wonders if she should have, other days she reminds herself that she no longer cares what happens to her brother. _You're dead to me_ , is what she said. What she meant was something closer to _You're a stranger to me. I don't know who died in Mount Weather and let you take his place._ )

Harper and Monty and the others say that the people in Mount Weather were _Severing_ kidnapped Grounders. Their daemons were all weak and dying from the radiation, and stealing other people's Dust was the only way to heal them. Octavia thinks about this, and she thinks about Maya dying in Jasper's arms with golden blood in her mouth, and she thinks about the fact that Lincoln's daemon shouldn't be able to go as far away from him as she does.

None of that explains how Bellamy walked into Mount Weather with a hawk on his shoulders all because Clarke fucking Griffin told him he was worth the risk, and walked out with a sleek black panther prowling in his shadow. 

People don't just _resettle_ after they pick a form. It doesn't make sense. But Kaluluwa won't say anything, and Bellamy won't either, and so Octavia sits and fumes about a world where things aren't happening the way they're supposed to, and she doesn't know what to do about it.

She never tells Bellamy this, but she looked back, just once, when he and Clarke stood at the _pearly gates_ of Camp Jaha and their mighty leader decided to just fucking _leave_. (Clarke fucking Griffin, with her fucking lion, settled with a roar of fury when the Commander broke their truce and left her standing at the mountain's entrance all alone, seriously _fuck her_. She should have known better than to turn around and do the exact same thing to Bellamy.)

They made a bittersweet picture of symmetry, Clarke and her lionheart, Bellamy and this new silhouette of Kaluluwa that Octavia couldn't recognize yet. Gold and black, day and night, both proud big cats with the same echoes of teeth and fur and claws. And then Clarke turned around and walked into the shadowed forest, and left Bellamy standing in the golden sunlight, roles reversed, and Octavia thought _this doesn't make sense either_. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What seriously freaks Octavia out about crazy Jaha and his preaching is that whatever he's handing out to people _erases_ their daemons. 

Faces with glassy eyes and slack smiles reassure Octavia that their daemons aren't gone, they're _safe inside_ , they're _right there with them in the City of Light_ , they're _finally protected from all the pain and cruelty of the world._

"Take the key, Octavia Blake," Jaha says, stepping forward with an outstretched hand. "See how life can be on the other side, without pain or suffering. Our souls are so vulnerable out here. People take one look at us and think they know who we are. But in the City of Light, everyone is on equal footing. Just you and your daemon, together."

Jaha had a clever-looking little burrowing owl that used to perch on his shoulder and stare out with wide, star-filled eyes. Octavia remembers likening him to Athena the first time she ever saw him, remembers feeling personally betrayed when he showed none of the Goddess' mercy to her mother. There is only empty space on his shoulder now.

She looks to Perseus. 

He is crouching on the ground behind her in the form of a long-limbed coyote, ears flattened to his skull, tail tucked between his legs. His eyes are wide and yellow and resenting, that look he gave her after the first time she hit him all over again. 

It is the first time she has seen him afraid since then. 

Octavia turns back to Jaha. 

"That's fucked up. You're fucked up," she says, and she marches away from him and his dumb key and his ghost of a daemon. 

Perseus slinks up to her outside, still prowling at the edges of her vision like a kicked dog. 

"You chose not to erase me," he says. Careful, and wary. 

"Don't get sentimental," Octavia mutters. "It's only because I need you to fight."

She may not have learned a lot from the Ark, but she did learn how to keep the useful things, and throw away the rest as soon as they were no good to her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Octavia washes Bellamy's blood off her knuckles in the first stream they come across, scrubbing hard like she can wash away the image of Lincoln's Dust on the wind as well.

Perseus trots into the stream to drink, and her gaze flickers up from her raw-red hands for a moment. 

She hates him, the way he looks, the way he watched her beat her brother and didn't give a single reaction beyond an insolent flick of his ears. In the form of a hyena he is hunchbacked and hideous, with a lopping, bow-legged walk and a permanent snarl frozen on his face. 

"I can't believe you settled into something so ugly," Octavia mutters, thrusting her hands back into the river. The cold of the water soothes the cuts on her hands but doesn't do much for the gaping hole in her chest where she kept Lincoln's name. 

Perseus takes his time answering, his long, flopping tongue lapping at the water for ages. She knows he's heard her because his ears swiveled around, and because daemons always hear their people, and this - _this_ is just him trying to rile her up. 

" _I'm_ the ugly one?" Perseus asks at long last, flicking water off his scarred, patchy muzzle. "I'm your truest reflection, Octavia. You're the one who chained your own brother up when he wanted to save Lincoln's life."

"Don't say his name," she interrupts sharply, but her daemon isn't done. 

"You're the one who beat his face to a pulp," Perseus sneers. "While he stood there and took it. You know he thinks he deserves it, right? You just made him live his worst nightmare. And if you went back and apologized right now, he'd welcome you right back with open arms. But everyone else is going to look at us and see exactly what we are."

"Shut up, shut up, _shut up!_ " Octavia chants, her voice rising in pitch as Perseus just won't _stop_. "Why won't you stop?"

"Why didn't _you_ stop?" Perseus counters. 

She screams. Her hands grope blindly along the riverbed for something she can wrench out of the mud, they find a rock, and she pulls it out with both hands. It's too heavy to make it all the way to Perseus, but he dances out of reach of its splash all the same, making this terrible _laughing_ sound in the back of his throat. Octavia doesn't stop screaming even as she hears the others crash through the undergrowth. Miller gets to her first, and he already has his rifle raised to his sights, scanning the surrounding area for an enemy he won't find. His beautiful russet-furred wolf, at his side, is bristling and snarling, ready to defend her. 

Octavia pulls out more rocks, smaller and more manageable projectiles, and she pelts them at Perseus like she can drive him away from her, like maybe she can put the same impossible distance between them that Bellamy has had with Kaluluwa ever since Mount Weather. 

But he easily dodges out of reach of every stone, all the while laughing at her, the sound eerily human. 

When he realizes what's happening, Miller drops his rifle and wraps his arms tightly around Octavia. She fights, but he's simply so much bigger than her, and there's little she can do to stop him from dragging her away from the riverbank. 

His wolf stands between them and Perseus, teeth bared, and Octavia cries out in pain as the distance between her and her terrible, ugly daemon becomes unbearably painful.

God, she hates that she's stuck with him, and herself, and all the choices she's made. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a terrible aching silence when Clarke cuts into the back of Raven's neck and a thin stream of golden liquid pours out, like the world is holding its breath to see what happens next. 

The golden sludge is thick and slow-moving, and it takes Octavia a moment to realize that it is growing. 

"Guys," she rasps, throat raw with emotion. "Guys, I think that's her daemon."

"Torionlaakslo," Jasper says, as his daemon leaps up onto the bed and shifts into a small, round-faced monkey. 

"What?" Bellamy asks.

"That's his name," Jasper mutters. " _Look_. He's being reborn."

In his monkey's hands the golden sludge is gaining form, gold Dust melting and solidifying into a many-plated sphere. Raven stirs weakly, and they quickly turn her onto her back as her eyes blink open. 

"Ow," Raven murmurs, and Octavia is the first to laugh, breathlessly, nervously. She can sense Perseus watching from the shadows, but doesn't look for him over her shoulder just yet. This moment belongs to Raven, to her eyes darting all around their shining faces until they settle on Jasper's monkey, cradling her armadillo daemon in the gentlest embrace possible. 

"Torionlaakslo," Raven whispers, reaching out. " _Oh_."

In her hands he uncurls, tiny plates sliding in on themselves to reveal his twitching face. The Grounders call Raven the Armoured One, for her impenetrable fortress of a daemon, and Octavia feels privileged to have seen her at her most vulnerable. 

"Together," they promise, in the back of the rover, and finally Octavia looks at Perseus. 

 _That means us, too_ , she thinks, giving him a significant glance. 

His dark eyes reveal no answers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's still hard to touch Lincoln's notebook, to hold worn leather in her hands and know that he will never again carve his thoughts into these pages. He will never again have thoughts, at all. 

But that doesn't mean she wants Jasper touching the notebook either. She and Perseus eye him in the back of the rover as he skims through pages like they're meaningless, like they're not all that's left of a beautiful mind. In the front, Bellamy has his rifle slung across his lap, and Kaluluwa is curled behind his chair, eyes closed, though the twitch of her poised ears give her away. Octavia wonders which of them would stop her first if she attacked Jasper. 

She wouldn't do it. It's just a thought exercise. A theoretical possibility. But she could. Lately Octavia's been looking at people and seeing targets instead, seeing all the ways their daemons could burst into Dust. Even on the Ark, the threat of open space hanging over her neck like the sword of Damocles, she was never so aware of her own fragility. She itches to snatch his notebook away, tuck it in tightly next to everything else she is not allowed to mourn.

"This Luna?" Jasper asks, and he holds the notebook up, pages spread to face her. Octavia barely spares a glance to the wild mane of hair, hooded eyes and a mouth lined with secrets. 

"Yes," she answers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lifetime ago, she followed a trail of lilies into a forest. What happened to that little girl, to the daemon that allowed himself, just for a moment, to take the form of a little songbird flying from branch to branch to seek out the next lily? Where is her grave - so the brittle, bleeding Octavia left behind might find it and destroy it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They first see Luna framed by a halo of light, her silhouette the only refuge in a blinding wall of sunlight as the doors of the shipping container swing wide open. It takes a moment for Octavia's eyes to adjust, to meet the eyes so strongly defined by Lincoln's pencil, ages ago. 

Clarke steps up before Octavia can say anything, and Bellamy follows, lurking just behind, a second wall of defense. Octavia resents the way they orbit each other, celestial bodies, stepping so in sync that a stranger could not tell if Clarke's golden lion belongs to her or him, if Kaluluwa's inky form belongs to him or her. Her brother is stupid, Octavia knows. He would give his soul on a silver platter if he could.

Luna is unreadable, standing in front of their four-person army without fear. She is barefoot, and unadorned with war paint, and Octavia cannot see her daemon. Perhaps it is something small, hidden in her hair, watching them with beaded eyes. 

They wait for her answer. 

"No," she says, and curls Clarke's fingers back over the chip in her outstretched palm. And then she turns, and walks out. 

They follow because there is nothing else to do. Octavia has never seen so much water, so much _vastness_. She breathes in salt, imagines what they would have done in the Ark with so much open space. Perseus is not so impressed. He bares his yellowed teeth at the edge of the oil rig, at the deadly drop, and skitters sideways. 

"You will not be able to sway me," Luna says dismissively, sweeping an iridescent sleeve vaguely over her kingdom. "Even if I wanted to help you, even if it did not go against every single one of my rules, I cannot leave my place here. I will live and die on the ocean."

"You don't understand - " Clarke breaks in, desperate, and Octavia wants to shove her over the edge, just a little bit. Clarke's the one who doesn't understand. What would she know about what they need? _Nothing_.

The oil rig shudders beneath them, like a great slumbering beast coming awake. Perseus flattens himself to the floor and presses his ears to the back of his skull, whining. All the matted hair on his back is standing up. Octavia ignores him and crawls to the edge of the platform, looking under. 

Far beneath them, the ocean is moving. No - not the ocean, but something quite like it. There is so much displaced water - rolling, heaving, _waves_ of it; tsunamis in every direction and gallons pouring off the tendrils that reach up and curl around the oil rig's supports - that at first, Octavia cannot make out its form. The waves settle into calm, inasmuch as an ocean can do so, and she sees sucker-adorned tentacles as tall as trees and several times thicker, a gaping mouth lined with teeth like stiletto blades, gleaming eyes meeting her gaze from just below the surface of the water. 

None of Luna's people seem particularly concerned. In fact, on another platform, Octavia can see children's daemons shifting into seabird forms and flying out to rest wherever the tentacles have found purchase. The corner of Luna's mouth twitches, the closest to a smile that they've seen from her so far. 

"My daemon, Charybdis," she says to Clarke. "As you can see, it would be quite impossible to transport us to Polis. This is our home."

"Charybdis," Bellamy says, voice gruff and awed, and Octavia knows he's thinking the same thing as her. It irks, this tiresome reminder that they were raised on the same legends. "Like the sea creature."

On land, Lexa's white stag bowed his head under the weight of the world in his antlers, a fitting crown for the king of the forest. But under the sea, a kraken rules as master.

"Yes. Exactly that. My mother's daemon saw me bleed black as a baby and thought I was fated to become a monster," Luna says, her smile turning bitter. She straightens up, tilts her face away. "I've made my own choices. Now you may make yours."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the flickering firelight of Lincoln's cave she learns the meaning of _eros_. 

Perseus takes the form of a sparrow and perches on her head as she strips - he gets tangled in her shirt when she pulls it over her ears and they laugh, all four of them. 

He always takes bird forms when they are feeling soft, and secretly Octavia loves him for it, loves these rare moments when they come. The ground does not allow them to be soft often. _Perseus_ does not allow them to be soft often.

But under Lincoln's warm, weighted gaze, his eyelashes brushing his cheeks as she leans in close and kisses him, his hands spread wide over bare skin - here she feels soft, here she feels warm, here she feels open. 

He lowers her to the furs on the cave floor gently, not because she is breakable but because it is a rare and beautiful and dangerous thing to treat someone gently, and Octavia's heart beats like a war drum in her chest. She winds her arms around his neck and kisses like he's her last bit of air. Perseus flutters his wings and lands on her wrist, the tiny weight of his talons digging into her skin. She shakes him off without breaking Lincoln's kiss, wanting this moment to herself.

In the end it's Lincoln who pulls away, only to press his forehead to her collarbone and breathe raggedly. 

"Octavia," he says, voice low and echoing. 

"I'm here."

"I want you to see me," he says, and Octavia forgets how to breathe for a moment when a glorious, radioactive-blue butterfly floats down from the hidden nooks and crannies of his cave. She has never seen his daemon before, has only heard him speak softly to her, and she always imagined some lithe, shadowy creature following behind at a distance, too stealthy to be seen. 

It did not occur to her that Lincoln's soul could take a form so small and fragile, and yet, the more she looks, the more it makes sense.

The other Grounders she saw, the ones that killed Roma as Lincoln's hand smothered her scream, they ran through their woods with surefooted wolves and bears and gorillas. Vicious, wild things. 

"You're beautiful," Octavia says, immediately, without thinking. At the edge of the firelight's reach, Perseus has backed up into the cave wall, fur bristling at the back of his neck. "But... How... Aren't you afraid of being crushed?"

"No," he says, his face shining with the faint blue glow coming off his daemon's fluttering wings. "This is what felt right."

He hesitates for a moment, and then his eyes meet hers. There is something there that Octavia has not seen in a long time. 

"She wants to land on you," he says.

"Oh," she breathes. " _Oh_. Yes, I - I am okay with that."

The weight of six feathery legs in her palm tickles, but Octavia pushes the sensation to the back of her mind as her gaze flickers up to Lincoln's face. She has never seen him look so peaceful, so at home, and her heart squeezes painfully in her chest. His daemon is but a wisp in her hands. She could close her fingers around her now, and kill him. It would be too easy, and that terrifies her. She never wants Lincoln to die, not ever, not in a world filled with such ugly things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, but when has the universe cared what she wants?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Are we ever going to be done fighting?" Bryan asks, sounding smaller than his body. 

"Hell yes," Miller answers, though his words are punctuated by mechanical clicks as he cleans and assembles his rifle in preparation for the battle. "We're gonna build a house on a lake. And you're gonna plant corn."

Octavia doesn't turn away from the window, but she can hear the soft, relieved laughter that melts into Bryan's voice.

"And raise chickens," he adds.

"Yeah. We'll grow old."

At her side, Perseus gives a low, hoarse growl, and Octavia keeps staring blankly out the cracks in the window. Through the grill she can see Polis' courtyard, cobblestones splattered with blood. It is very empty, this graveyard of free will. She finds some kind of violent justice in the fact that when she dies, perhaps on a cross with the others who spit at ALIE's feet, Perseus will shatter in a cloud of golden Dust and dissipate on the wind, back to the sky from which they came. But Octavia will remain. They will have to scrub her from the stone, and still she will leave a stain that says  _I was here, I was glorious, I was bright and brimming with life._

Bellamy is watching her like she might break. She sees him now, in the corner of her eye. He is always there, at the edges of her vision. Once he was all she knew. Now she looks through the window and sees only an opportunity to die with her dignity intact, a warrior's death, like Indra says, like Lincoln deserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Lincoln knew our rules. We take in people who are done fighting. Done killing. Look at you. Fighting is all you know. Death is all you know. Lincoln would have never brought that here."

She's right, of course, but that doesn't make it hurt any less.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When she stabs Pike, she can breathe again, for just a moment. 

For one glorious, ephemeral moment, Octavia sees his life flicker across his face, all the shock and disbelief and finally - _betrayal_. He didn't think she'd do it. _Good_. She wants him to feel that same lurch she felt when the Dropship detached from the Ark and hurtled to Earth, gravity vanished from underneath her feet. She wants him to know what it felt like to strain her body against the seatbelts biting into her skin, to scream unheard over the sound of metal groaning, to watch 100 criminals die and be reborn in flashing lights. She wants him to know that nothing can be trusted, not ever again, because Lincoln was all the good in the world, and now he is gone, and it's Pike's fault. 

Pike falls off the tip of her sword with a clean _snick_ , and he's still alive when his knees hit the ground, so Perseus sinks his teeth into his badger daemon's throat. She shatters into golden Dust in his jaws.

Octavia's mind flickers back to the moment she settled - watching her first love's execution from the crest of the hill, Kane's arm around her waist trying to pull her away, Perseus' ungodly howl as they realized just how cruel and terrible and ugly the world could be. How cruel and terrible and ugly _they_ could be. 

She sees Lincoln's lovely blue butterfly dissipate into Dust all over again, and suddenly that crushing weight is back on her chest. Lincoln, Pike - does it matter, in the end? She can't tell Dust apart from Dust. Something is stuck in her throat, thick and cloying. She cannot breathe again. 

Bellamy is watching, Clarke at his side, throne at their back. Octavia has an awful urge to take a bow, like maybe this was all pretend, one of the theatrical tragedies he and Aurora would read aloud in her childhood. She waits for curtain call, the applause. _Et tu, Brute?_

There is none. These are the choices she has made.

She leaves. Exit, stage right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For a long time she wanders, alone. 

 _Not alone_ , she corrects herself, looking over her shoulder to see pieces of her daemon. He follows because he can't not follow, but they do not speak or meet eyes or acknowledge each other in any way. She has not seen him in his entirety since they left Polis behind for shady forests and rocky glens - only hints. Pointed ears from the other side of a bush. A mangy hind leg vanishing behind a tree. Faint maniacal laughter carried by wind. 

So perhaps she is alone, after all. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As spring dawns with wet sunrises and squelching mud underneath her callused feet, Octavia finds the Dead Zone. It does not look like very much to her - just a strip of flat, dusty land, unmarked except for the occasional tumbleweed. 

Perseus comes to her side for the first time since they murdered Pike together. His ears are pressed flat against his skull. He looks at her the same way he looked the first time she hit him, or the time Jaha offered her a chip that would erase him. He is afraid. It rolls off of him in suffocating waves. 

"This place is not for us," he says, voice low and hoarse. He sounds like a feral thing. She is a little bit surprised he remembers how to speak. It has been so long. 

"This place is not for _you_ ," she says, voice just as scratchy. She is a little bit surprised _she_ remembers how to speak. 

"Octavia," he says, lowering his mangy, mottled body to the ground and stretching his front legs out. Submission. He is begging her. " _Please_. Let's turn back. This place is not for us."

"If Murphy could make it across, so can I," Octavia answers. She takes her first step, and Perseus whines in pain. He does not move, still kneeling in the dust with his ears pressed back, looking at her with eyes that are at once pleading and accusing. 

"This is a trial for warriors," Perseus rasps. "For people like Indra, and Luna, and Lin-"

"We are a warrior," she interrupts. "I'm taking this trial. What are you gonna do, stop me? Come on, you useless lump of fur. Come and stop me."

She takes another step into the Dead Zone, staring him in the eyes, and she can feel the distance between them like a hook in her navel, digging into flesh and tearing. Her eyes water. She takes another step. Perseus makes a low moan in the back of his throat, presses his muzzle into dust. 

"Do you think that if you do this, you can make me resettle?" he asks, low and furious. "That separation will give me a new form, like it did for Bellamy and Kaluluwa?"

"Maybe."

"It won't work," Perseus snarls, baring his teeth at her. She can see the whites of his eyes. They blur together through the tears in her eyes. Her knees are shaking underneath her weight. "You're stuck with ugly old me for the rest of our life. Because _this_ is what we are, Octavia. Accept it already."

"Fuck you, Perseus," she says, and before the growing fear in her chest can force her back, she takes a running leap into the Dead Zone. Perseus howls at the edge, left behind, and Octavia tries not to vomit. She's been living off of traps and spearings for months, and needs every scrap she can put into her stomach. She can't afford to lose yesterday's dinner. 

It could be a few minutes, it could be hours, it could be an eternity. When she can't walk anymore, she crawls, clawing her fingers into sand and dragging herself a little bit further away. 

At some point the aching where Perseus should be is replaced by a dull sort of regret. It's not healed, not by any measure, but she no longer feels like she is going to die if she takes another step. Octavia reaches forward with a shaking hand, and her fingers brush tiny green shoots. Grass is growing here again. She's made it to the other side of the Dead Zone. She's survived the trial. She lets herself rest a while, and then she picks herself up and crawls back the other way. 

Perseus is still crouched in the dust in the same position she left him in, a gargoyle standing guard over the entrance to hell. He is still a hyena. He stands awkwardly when she collapses next to him. Octavia closes her eyes. He nudges at her face with his nose, and her head lolls to the other side without resistance. A snarl rings in her ear, and then she feels teeth brush either side of her throat, not digging in, not drawing blood, not yet. His breath is awful. 

Hyenas have one of the strongest bites of any mammals. They need to, because they're scavengers. Because they find the carcasses left behind by other predators and strip them down to the bone, and when only ivory remains they crush that between their teeth too, sucking out all the marrow until there's nothing left at all to pick at.

Octavia opens her eyes, so if she dies, at least she can die seeing the sky she fell down from. It's a brilliant blue, almost painful to look at, and she can't help but think of Lincoln's daemon again. It's always going to hurt, isn't it?

After a long moment, Perseus removes his teeth from her neck and snaps his jaw shut. Flecks of spit fly out across her face, and she barely blinks. 

"Hurry up," she whispers.

Perseus leaves, so she closes her eyes again. The backs of her eyelids are golden-brown, and she thinks about Clarke's lion. The sun sets and then she sees only black, and then she thinks about Kaluluwa's new panther form. 

Perseus comes back, sometime that night, and drops a bloody rabbit in her lap. 

"Eat," he growls, and then he sprawls at her feet, ears pricked as he watches out for danger. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

" _Ai like_  -"

"No, _ai laik_. Try again."

" _Ai laik?_ "

"Better. Say the whole phrase."

" _Ai laik Octavia kom Skaikru_... what's the second part again?"

" _En ai gaf gouthru klir._ "

" _En ai gaf_... what? Lincoln, are those real words?"

"Yes. This is important. Try again."

"Again?"

"Again and again, until you get it right."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She lights a signal fire for the second time, throws in green twigs until she thinks they'll never come. 

When they do, she's ready. Her sword lies on the ground, daggers beside it, everything wrapped up neatly in scraps of cloth, Lincoln's journal on top. 

" _Ai laik Octavia en ai gaf gouthru klir_. I want to try again."

Luna's people are cast in sharp contrast by the firelight. Their faces are hard, their daemons suspicious. 

" _Skaikru_ is not welcome with us, _Okteivia_. You bring violence and hatred. You know this already."

"I am not _Skaikru_ ," she snaps, and then bites back her temper. "I have no family. I am only trying to find a place in the world. Please. I want to try again."

They hand her a vial, and she does not hesitate. Even now, she trusts Lincoln. 

When she wakes, Luna is sitting beside her; back leaned against the side of the shipping container, legs stretched out in front of her. Her hair is twisted with strips of blue cloth adorned with tiny seashells. They tinkle with every head movement. Music for fairies. For the girl Octavia used to be. Perseus is retelling the story of their separation in a low voice, and Octavia does not move for a moment, listening to the pain in his voice. People do not just  _talk_ to other people's daemons, and if they did, they wouldn't talk about such painful, secret things. Luna is a stranger.

 _Perseus is, too,_ a voice in the back of her mind whispers, and that hurts to consider, so Octavia immediately sits up and interrupts Perseus' storytelling. 

"Good morning," Luna says in a serene tone that gives Octavia the impression that she knows she woke up a while ago. "How's your head."

"Been better," Octavia says shortly, blinking away the knock-out drug's hangover effect. She looks to the doors of the shipping container, barred shut. She doesn't know of any other Grounder clans that lock prisoners in with their leaders. It seems like a security risk. Except - Octavia's seen Luna fight. "Why are the doors shut?"

"You haven't convinced me that you've earned entry," Luna says. "Perseus has been catching me up on everything I missed on the mainland."

"We don't have much news," Octavia mutters. "Haven't really seen anyone else in weeks. Just me and him."

"So I hear." By the faint sunlight streaming in through rusted holes in the walls, Luna scrutinizes her. Octavia doesn't think she can be much older than Bellamy, but something in her eyes is sad and ancient. Suiting, for someone whose daemon is a centuries-old mythical sea monster. "Why are you here, Okteivia kom Skaikru?"

"Where were you from before you founded the Boat Clan?" Octavia demands instead of answering. A flicker of a frown passes over Luna's face. 

"The Plains Riders," she says. "We were more nomadic than some of the other clans, but the plains were my home for several years."

"But people don't call you Luna kom Ingranrona now. They call you Luna kom Floukru. So don't call me Octavia kom Skaikru. That's not my home anymore."

Pained understanding passes over Luna's face before she settles her expression into something neutral and secretive. Octavia swallows down a burst of pride, feeling like she's just passed some kind of unspoken test.

"What should I call you, then? Have you come here to be Octavia kom Floukru?"

And just like that, the warm pride fades. Another test - and Octavia doesn't know what the correct answer to this one is. 

"We don't know," Perseus says, answering for her. "We don't know if we'll stay or go. We're looking for a home. This might be it. Might not be. I think we just wanted to talk about... About Lincoln. With someone who understands."

Octavia glares at him, wishes she could set his mangy hide on fire, but he doesn't tear his gaze from Luna. He is the definition of tension. bristling with energy, muscles trembling under patchy fur. By contrast, Luna is completely frozen in place, her face serious and serene, her head tilted in consideration. Octavia notices that her hands have curled into tight fists, and forces her fingers to stretch out. They pop painfully, and she presses her palms against the container's cool floor. 

"Very well. Come, Octavia." Luna stands, skirts swishing about her bare ankles, and raps her knuckles against the door three times. After a moment, they creak as guards on the other side unbar them and let light pour in. Octavia steps into sunlight, on the surface of the ocean, and feels freedom fill her lungs. She thinks of the first breath she took when Bellamy lowered the Dropship door - it tasted sweet and clean after seventeen years of recycled air, it tasted like a second chance, like youth renewed. On the ocean the air is sharper, cutting into her mouth with salt and leaving behind an echo that makes her think of wet and dark and dying things. It suddenly strikes her that she could live hundreds of lifetimes on Earth, travel for hundreds of days in any direction, and still not taste all the air it has to offer. 

She and Perseus are very small. Raindrops against raging tides. 

He nudges his head against the back of Octavia's knees to warn her that Luna's leaving her behind, and she jogs to catch up. There is much for them to learn. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“How is someone raised beneath the floor not a total basket case?”

Octavia scoffs, straightens up her shoulders. She makes sure Atom and his little pine thrush are watching, and then she flips her hair in their direction. 

“Who says I’m not?” she challenges. She wants to know who in the camp has been calling her crazy behind her back. They should do it to her face. She wants to see them choke on their words.

“It’s because he loves you," Atom continues, like she hasn't said anything. "Your brother? You’re not a basket case because you were loved.”

_Were loved._

_Loved?_

_Were?_

Because you _were loved_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Octavia expects Luna to lead her somewhere quiet where they can talk. Her mind is teeming with half-questions, none formed enough to voice, but she thinks she'll be able to sort through the mess and pick out what she wants to know. She wants to hear how Luna and Lincoln met, why she left and why he stayed, how a butterfly and a kraken saw something of worth in each other. 

She wants to know if Luna has ever made Lincoln laugh - slowly, at first, the corners of his cheeks twisting in resistance of a smile, and then his head ducking towards his chest, his shoulders shaking, a hand reaching up to disguise the curve of his mouth.

Instead, Luna leads her into a fishing class. 

"Everyone earns their room and board," she replies when Octavia dares to question her. Perseus bites her fingers when she opens her mouth to protest, so she shuts up and ties knots in a fishing net in a festering, silent storm of anger. Every other student is a round-faced child eager to show Luna their handiwork, and it reminds Octavia of the early Dropship days all over again, seventeen years old and fighting tooth and claw for every scrap of approval she could get from her peers. 

At the end, Luna peers over her shoulder at the meager progress she's made, and lets out a long exhale. 

"You'll improve," she says grudgingly. The other children run off to dinner and at last, _at last_ , they get a moment to speak alone.

"Tell me everything about Lincoln," Octavia pleads. "Everything you remember."

Luna stares westward, towards the shore, towards the setting sun. 

"What happened to his body?" she asks instead of answering. "Did you burn it?"

"Yes," Octavia says, nodding vigorously. "The proper _Trikru_ way, like I was taught."

A beat of silence. 

"Good," Luna says faintly. "He'd appreciate that. Good night, Octavia."

And that's all she gets out of her, that first night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"What do you think happened to mom's body?" Perseus asks her as they lie awake watching moonlight play across the oil rig's rusted surfaces. It's loud here the way it hasn't been since the Ark, crashing waves replacing the neverending machine hum. Octavia's gotten so used to silence - months of it, with not even a daemon who would talk to her, just her and her grief and her thoughts. 

"Did it fall to Earth with us?" Perseus insists, nudging his nose into her arm. Octavia recoils instantly from the dampness, rolls onto her other side so her back is facing him. He remains undeterred, crawling closer so his mouth is just above her ear. His tongue lolls out the side and dribbles drool onto her cheek. "Is she still orbiting around the planet with all the other space debris?"

"Go to sleep, Perseus," Octavia drones. 

"I know you're listening," he says. "I know you're thinking you should be spinning in space with her."

She lashes out, but he's too quick. Across the room, a stranger stirs in their sleep as Perseus skitters away, claws clicking against metal. He snickers under his breath, ducks his mangy head. He's her soul. Of course he knows when she's about to explode. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She might have thought Clarke was just really fucking bad at talking to Luna. Turns out, it's not just the promise of a freaky artificial intelligence burrowing under her skin that made her uncooperative. Luna's _natural state of being_ is uncooperative. When she does talk to Octavia, she side-steps every question, gives some unrelated answer that leaves her feeling frustrated and unsatisfied and stupid. 

Eventually, Octavia stops asking, and just starts venting. 

They still haven't given her sword back - she doesn't expect them to, not with their insistence on peace - and without its comforting weight on her back, without its hilt in her hand, Octavia paces. She shouts, she screams, she throws her hands up in the air. Luna, in contrast, always remains perfectly still, doing sums in a worn journal, calculating all the various wares they'll need to trade for on the mainland, recording daily catches and childrens' antics. It goes on for weeks.

"Are you even listening?" Octavia screams one night. Her fists are shaking at her sides. Luna has not looked at her once.

"Yes," Luna says, like she was waiting for the question. Immediately. Without an ounce of hesitation. Octavia's breathing is loud and ragged in the room. 

"Oh," she answers, sounding very young. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The oil rig is bigger than Aurora's apartment on Factory Station, but not by much. The physical size of a cage matters very little once you've mapped it all out. The boredom is very familiar. 

Like Bellamy, _Floukru_ tells stories to pass the time. Sometimes they do it with song, sometimes with poetry, sometimes with nothing more than a small, honest voice, saying _this is what happened. This is what I remember. This is what I learned._

After a few weeks, they ask Octavia. Luna is watching from the other side of the room. For a moment, she and Perseus are lost in the forest again, voices gone after a winter of perfect silence. She struggles to remember how to put language together. Here are the mechanics of speech, from her perspective: lungs, a throat, a mouth. A mind that still recalls every story it has ever been told, the spectre of a little girl who clung to every piece of humanity she was ever shown. 

So Octavia tells them stories of Charybdis; the monster, the whirlpool. She tells them of Scylla, poised on the other side of the strait, each monster waiting to devour unsuspecting ships; she tells them of Odysseus adrift on his raft, clinging to a fig tree to keep from falling into her maw; she tells them of Jason and his Argonauts following the safe passage of sea nymphs.

"Bellamy would be proud," Luna tells her. The sound of applause still rings in Octavia's ears. She looks down at her hands, at once finding the tiny scars on her knuckles where she broke skin on Bellamy's cheekbones. She traces the indents with her fingertips, wonders if he still carries matching marks, wherever he is now on this cruel, hallowed ground. 

"I doubt it," Octavia mutters. 

They sit in silence, staring at the fire, as the room clears out. Everyone on the oil rig has a place to sleep and a family to say good night to. Everyone but Luna and Octavia. At last they are alone. Luna reaches out, cups Octavia's cheek in her hand. Neither says anything, but she hears words in her mind all the same. _You’re not a basket case because you were loved._

Luna's lips are cold against hers, but her mouth opens at the slip of tongue and inside she is so warm that Octavia's toes curl in her boots. She bites down on Luna's lower lip, just to push her limits. Luna's fingers twitch against the curve of her cheek, and she runs her tongue along Octavia's teeth like she can soften the edges there, somehow, can soften the nights Octavia spent curled alone in the roots of a tree with her fist shoved in her mouth so no predators would hear her crying. 

"It's not a battle," Luna murmurs against her throat, when Octavia resists being gently pushed down. 

"It is to me," Octavia answers, flipping them over so she's on top, knee wedged between Luna's thighs. They kiss until Octavia's mouth goes numb, until her fingers stop clutching at Luna's coat and relax idly against her stomach, until her head finds the soft curve of Luna's shoulder. She falls asleep there, and wakes up at dawn with the cries of seabirds piercing through her dreams. 

"Come check the morning catch with me," Luna says, and leaves without waiting for an answer. Perseus looks at her with unreadable eyes, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. Octavia jabs a finger in his direction, but says nothing. There is nothing to say.

At the lower levels of the oil rig, waves slap against pillars, and Luna's Charybdis reaches out with gentle tentacles to help them pull the nets in. Perseus glares at a fish that dares to flop across his front paws. Octavia picks it up and throws it back in with the rest of them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"If you need to leave, I get that," Bellamy says. The sun is shining, the world is vividly green, and his face is unmarred by blood and dirt. He is so earnest, so honest. Kaluluwa is perched on his shoulder in the form Octavia used to know best, the one with feathers rather than shadowy fur. "But you'll always fit in with me."

Octavia means to follow the script, but instead she says, "This is a dream, isn't it?"

"You can wake up whenever."

"I don't fit in with you in reality," Octavia says, and suddenly the truth of this makes her throat close up. Kaluluwa opens her beak and lets out a low, mournful screech. In dreams her brother is sitting at her side, so close she could reach out and touch him, and he loves her, and she loves him. In dreams the world has not yet torn itself apart. In dreams it is only a matter of time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ships return with spring's slow descent into summer. Luna's face grows thoughtful when they appear on the horizon, and by then Octavia knows her well enough to recognize Charybdis' movements underneath the oil rig as barely restrained curiosity. Luna maintains that veneer of serene control so thoroughly that sometimes Octavia nearly forgets that she lived her childhood travelling the mainland, that she's seen much more of the world than Octavia has and must still remember those faraway places and people, that she did not suddenly spring into existence on the ocean. 

"Who is it?" she asks hoarsely. At her side, Perseus as standing as stiffly as a board, head up, ears pricked, tail tucked neatly between his legs. It is a far cry from his usual sneering slouch. She thinks he already knows what she does not want to admit. 

"Before you arrived here, Skaikru asked for our resources on a journey they believed would save the world," Luna murmurs. All around them, the oil rig hums with activity - children's daemons taking on seabird forms as though an extra meter or so of height will give them a better view of the ships, adults pausing in their chores to speculate on the trip's success, battered binoculars being passed around from group to group. In contrast, Octavia and Luna are perfectly still and silent. "I suppose their return means it went well."

"My brother?" Octavia asks, mouth dry.

"He didn't seem like the type to stay away from certain danger," Luna answers, and it is only a half-answer, but Octavia understands. "Will you be going home with them, Octavia of nowhere?"

Perseus swings his mangy head around to look at her. He says nothing. His tail is still tucked, but she cannot tell if it is from fear or shame or submission. Some days it is frustrating how little she can read herself. 

"If I do," Octavia says carefully, "Will I be able to come back? To see you?"

Luna's gaze is distant, and sad. Something in her eyes reminds Octavia of Lincoln, when she said she would remain with her fellow Delinquents despite Tristan's army bearing down on them, even if it killed her. 

"I don't think that would be wise," Luna says. Her voice is also careful. "I give second chances, on occasion. I do not give third chances."

Octavia nods, and goes to pack her things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is eight years old, curled up under the floor as footsteps creak over her head, whispering _fear is a demon I am not afraid slay your fears I am not afraid fear is a demon slay your fears I am not afraid I am not afraid I am not -_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bellamy is, if possible, even darker after weeks on the sea. As his ship nears port, he leaps off to secure the line with the ease of a sailor. He is shirtless, and Octavia can see that although a white bandages mars the side of his ribcage, the rest of him looks strong and healthy and dotted with constellations of freckles. Clarke follows him a moment later, sleeves rolled up to expose sunburnt, peeling skin. She elbows him, says something that the wind steals, and he laughs. The sight hits her like a punch to the gut - a foreign concept after so many weeks as a guest in a kingdom without violence.

Their daemons pad behind on large, furry paws, perfectly in step. Big cats on water - who would have thought? They still look like mirror images of each other, day and night, black and gold. Octavia clutches her sack of worldly possessions to her chest and considers turning around and pretending she hasn't seen them. 

"Blakes don't back down," Perseus says. 

Octavia means to say something scathing in reply, but what comes out instead is: "Are we still a Blake?"

_\- fear is a demon I am not afraid slay your fears -_

"Why don't you find out?"

More strangers are spilling off the ship onto the oil rig; people Octavia knew, once upon a time. Miller and Harper, her arm slung around his shoulders, his knuckles playfully messing up her hair. Monty crouching down to let his salamander daemon run loose. Raven, slowly dragging her leg over the side, looking pleased to be off the ship at last. They are shining with life. They look bright and unstoppable and victorious. They look like people who have saved the world without her.

_I've made my own choices. Now you may make yours._

"Let's go, Perseus," Octavia says softly.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> You may decided for yourself if Octavia goes home with Skaikru or stays back, unseen. I didn't think I would be able to do justice to the conversation she and Bellamy need to have. 
> 
> This fic really just happened because I was thinking about daemons and I asked myself, what's the most unconventional, what-the-fuck-did-you-settle-as, eyebrow-raising daemon out there? I really love daemon fics. I've read almost every one in every fandom I've ever been in. But I'm also a lil bit tired of people getting along perfectly with their daemons. Fuck that. I certainly don't understand or get along with myself some days. Why would Octavia, with her trauma and messed-up childhood and serious anger issues (you better sort those out in S4 before you're allowed near Bellamy again, srsly girl), get along with herself? Thus, Perseus was born. 
> 
> Also, there was an Azula reference in there. 10 points to anyone who caught it.
> 
> Other daemons, in case you missed them:  
> Bellamy/Kaluluwa: Hawk, then resettled as a blank panther after Mt Weather torture  
> Lincoln: Blue radioactive butterfly, too pure for this world  
> Clarke: Lion, settled when Lexa abandoned her at Mt Weather  
> Lexa: Stag, king-of-the-forest #aesthetic  
> Miller: Wolf. V protective. V noble.  
> Raven/Torionlaakslo: Armadillo. Really liked the idea of Grounders calling her the 'armoured one'. Daemon name modified from... some Finnish town? Because it sounded appropriately daemon-y.  
> Jasper: Fluffy monkey.  
> Monty: Salamander of some kind.  
> Luna/Charybdis: I just really wanted to give her a motherflippin' KRAKEN okay I'm sorry. But just. Picture Clarke + co rolling up with the Flame being like 'yo stick this thing in your head and come back to Polis with us' and Luna just gesturing at her daemon and being like 'yeah right away lemme just transport my giant sea monster'. 
> 
> Title modified from Richard Siken's _crush_ :  
>  _tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us_  
>  these, our bodies possessed by light  
> tell me we'll never get used to it
> 
> I'm embarrassingly friendly. Come talk to me about everything on tumblr.


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